(two thousand) Four More Years!

It was 2004. I was set to get married in July. I was living with mike huff in a condo in north Johnson City. Life was good.

I had just started working at ACT in boones creek. That was a miserable place. I hated it more than mayonaise. I worked in Litton Loan Servicing, which wasn't bad. You just collected on past due mortgages. It was just being locked in a building with no sunlight, and surrounded by people who were miserable, I was miserable, IT was miserable. The only redeeming factor about the place was that Jon Weems lives close to the place. This began the years of EDS.
EDS was the Extreme Doom Squad. The origin of the name comes from a night at our practice space when i took colored tape and drew godzilla on our bass cab. Joey, then took the tape and wrote Extreem Doom. Then he Also put that on his bass drum. We then decided that Extreme doom squad kicked ass, so it was our new joke crew. Anyway, we hung out at jons house every single night, sometimes untill sun-up. It was fun. He is a killer guy, and one of my best friends to this day.
We played some shows at the hideaway, but mostly at the Rambis. It was probably the best DIY venue of my time as far as just being a venue is concerned. We had so many good bands play there. We used it as a practice space for a while too. We shared it with this bogus band called Tab10. They were like if pantera were horrible, and at the same time, had just as big of egos, and tried to sound like saliva.

I think the biggest show at the Rambis was As I lay Dying. We played that. This room that hand standing room only for maybe 20 people suddenly had like 100 poeple in it. It was sweet. Disciple played there one time. We let the showdown borrow our van to take thier stuff over there for that show. Then they decided to cover our windows in disciple stickers. I was super pissed off about it. They also broke our window trying to get something out, Replaced it with plexi-glass, and said "dude that windows like 80 bux!" like we were the assholes for wanting it fixed... We were all kids, i would have done the same thing back then. If they had done it now, they would have fixed it, but back then we were all broke, always borrowing and breaking each other's shit. No hard feelings. It wasn't really a big deal, the plexi glass is still in the window. No skin off of my ass.

Toward the end of march, My life sucked, and i had had enough. I had a one hour lunch break. I used it to go get a thick burger, and drive to the lake, at the boat ramp, and enjoy the afternoon for a minute. There were poeple out on jet skis and shit like that. Everyone was so stoked on life, like high fiving and shit. I was stuck in a prison on planet bullshit. Where everyone was on pills and the Floor Manager wore slacks, a preformance fleece, and an ear piece, and he chewed his gum with his mouth open really obnoxiously. The cool guy/dave grohl chew, only this guy was a douchebag. I called my old boss at Steak Out. He said i could come back and work there if I wanted to. I went back in to work, Gave bubba my name tag and told him that i quit. I felt vindicated.

The next few months were kind of a blur, nothing really exciting. I hung out with Crystal Every day since we were engaged. Nothing was particularly different. In June I got an apartment that we were going to move into in july. I was making pretty good moneys at steak out.

The big day, July 24 2004 came as i was at the end of a 4 day party. First My bachelor party was IROM, Secret lives, and Showdown. It kicekd ass. Tarvo dressed up as a woman named "baby momma thong" He danced out on stage after one the bands and was intent on wierding me out/ embarassing me. I was fine untill he put his foot on the chair and he was really wearing a woman's thong, and his dick was hanging out of one side, his balls the other. Fucking wierd.
It was killer. That night i went home and forgot to do laundry, and/or make my bed.

Hey, Fuck Me, I know. But, I didn't know this would be a huge deal. I should have, but didn't. Our wedding ceremony was beautiful. The most beautiful girl in the world agreed to a Better or Worse marriage with a slacker, drunk, band loser. The fever played, it was awesome. I also changed into mesh shorts after the ceremony since it was balls hot outside, also apparently a bad move. Our car was covered in a reproductive diagram, and shit like that which was kind of a bummer. We left and crystal wanted to go by the hotel that i told her i cancelled my reservation for since we were leaving for our honeymoon the next morning. Like i said, i should have thought about it, but I didn't. She had to get something from one of our in-laws. When she came back out to the car, she had this really dissapointed face. We got home, and i realized that I had not even made the bed. Needless to say it bummed her out even more. She didn't act like it tho.
Our honeymoon was cool tho. We went to massenuten mountain resort. It was nice. It was good to get away for a little bit. I was ready to come back home after a few days, but it was nice.

I had all intentions of not really playing out of town shows anymore. Just focusing on being married and working and shit like that. Then Crystal told me that she didnt' really have ambition in life, and that i should go for it. So, i did. We booked a winter tour that year. It was pretty cool. We played in brigeport, Al. This kid Brent that lives there, dropkicked a guy for shoving his grandmother. Then he bought us all a unbelievable amount of Krystal burgers. We played in myrtle beach on new years eve. It was pretty cool, other than the fact that nobody would let us stay in thier hotel, and AAron was soft talking to his girlfriend all night, and It was pissing me off to no end. He then said. "jake i'm really tired of being in this van" I was so pissed i would have punched him in the face had i been sitting beside him. We finally stayed in a pretty sweet hotel with 2 rooms for like 30 bucks. We also ordered 2 pizzas from papa johns, and they were there in like 10 minutes. No Joke.

That night eric rogers found out that his woman, who had beend dragging him along for a few weeks and making him lose his shit at least once an hour, was moving on. He drank like 10 miller high life's at the show. Once we were in the hotel room, Rog was wil'in out and decided that he was going to go out on the balcony, facing the road, drop his pants, and shake his dick and balls at traffic. Timid eric rogers died that night. That re-planted the seed for that eventually sprouted to Rogers, Then Rawg, and now more affectionately The Rawg.

More to Come next week.